Overview
- Gives importance to the reader’s perspective not just scholars or critics
- Examines the relationship between popular culture and literary studies
- Maps the history of the US novel and US literary culture
Part of the book series: American Literature Readings in the 21st Century (ALTC)
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Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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The Crime
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Front Matter
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The Deal
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Popular fiction follows literature professors wherever they go. At coffee shops or out for drinks, after faculty meetings or classes, even at family reunions – they are persistently pressed to talk about bestselling novels. Questions immediately follow: What do I mean when I say a book is "good"? Why do contemporary novels like these, conversations like these, matter to professors of literature? Shouldn't they be spending their time re-reading The Great Gatsby? The Ulysses Delusion confronts these questions and answers their call for more engaged conversations about books. Through topics like the Oprah's Book Club, Harry Potter, and Chick Lit, Cecilia Konchar Farr explores the lively, democratic, and gendered history of novels in the US as a context for understanding how avid readers and literary professionals have come to assess them so differently.
Reviews
"The Ulysses Delusion is an engaging discussion of the contemporary literary marketplace and the tastemakers who have framed discussions of literary quality and served as the gatekeepers to popular success in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. Konchar Farr's unapologetic championing of the accessible is both ideologically resonant with her thesis and admirable—she has truly produced a popular literary criticism that is both rigorous and readable." - Amy L. Blair, Associate Professor of English at Marquette University, USA and author of Reading Up: Middle-Class Readers and the Culture of Success in the Early Twentieth-Century United States
"The Ulysses Delusion is an engaging discussion of the contemporary literary marketplace and the tastemakers who have framed discussions of literary quality and served as the gatekeepers to popular success in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries. Konchar Farr's unapologetic championing of the accessible is both ideologically resonant with her thesis and admirable—she has truly produced a popular literary criticism that is both rigorous and readable." - Amy L. Blair, Associate Professor of English at Marquette University, USA and author of Reading Up: Middle-Class Readers and the Culture of Success in the Early Twentieth-Century United States
About the author
Cecilia Konchar Farr is Professor of English at St. Catherine University, USA.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Ulysses Delusion
Book Subtitle: Rethinking Standards of Literary Merit
Authors: Cecilia Konchar Farr
Series Title: American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137542779
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-55362-1Published: 25 January 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-71647-0Published: 19 May 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-54277-9Published: 08 April 2016
Series ISSN: 2634-579X
Series E-ISSN: 2634-5803
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XX, 199
Topics: Literary Theory, Gender Studies, Literature, general, Cultural Theory, Fiction, Literary History